There is also plenty of studies that even in the same neighborhoods, Blacks are prosecuted more harshly for the same crime...

And the “same policies” are still in force in the inner cities and there are different policies in the burbs in rural America.

Yes, I’m aware.

This isn't one of those cases. Minorities being prosecuted for using prescribed opioids isn't exactly what is happening en masse here.

That is no different than until recently, crack had much harsher penalties than the same amount of cocaine. Crack was seen as an “inner city”. How many minorities do you really think live in what most people classify as “rural America” or even the suburbs?

Not that I am saying that I have ever gotten a racist vibe where I live, but let’s just say that every place we go in our part of metro Atlanta, we stand out.

Every study shows that most Blacks live in a majority minority neighborhood.

I get that you have an axe to grind and want to influence public policy but this opioid crisis just already has enveloped everyone under its ‘mental health’ umbrella. There wont be a resolution on the disparity of enforcement tactics.

Basically I’m just not having that particular conversation with you because thats not what this thread is about, and its clear you only want to derail into your writing prompt. The irony isn't lost on anyone, lots of people have seen the Dave Chapelle "Sticks and Stones" standup.

The structure of this crisis is prescribed drugs. So consumers of any color wont go to jail, and big pharma execs wont go to jail. Perhaps some particularly excessive doctors will, and feel free to make a statistical analysis of their ethnicity and socioeconomic status to find a correlation that matches your distress.

People using unprescribed and scheduled opioids still face law enforcement pressure.

You really think that everyone abusing opioids is obtaining them Legally? This “thread” is about blaming the media and not placing blame on “the parents”, “the culture”, “the lack of personal responsibility”, etc that was placed on the “inner city”.

You haven’t been paying attention to the whole treat addiction like an illness in rural America?

Are you advocating anything in particular?

Do you want to stuff private prisons with sick people just because they are white after acknowledging its a failed policy? Because whoa.

Do you just want acknowledgement of an older policy that disproportionately affected black people which is being replaced society wide?

Spoiler alert, neither of those things are going to happen more than they already are.

Is there anything productive you would like to see that isn't already happening?

We've asked you several times to stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN. If you keep doing it we are going to have to ban you again. I don't want to do that, so if you would please review the site guidelines and take the spirit of this site more to heart, we'd appreciate it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Why is it you assume that I don’t want the justice system to treat all victimless crimes the same instead of it being a two tier system where one set of people get treatment and the other set get treated like enemy combatants - “the War on Crime?”

I'm not assuming anything, I gave the most extreme examples of how unproductive it is to pursue your writing prompt and then asked you if had independently come up with anything productive that I didn't perceive and that you also failed to make clear. I wanted to know if there is any more point to your observation or if you just wanted to spread the word of irony that everyone already knows.